Read all about our Fiery Furnace experience in Arches National Park in Utah. Along with our daughter, we made it through this unique trail through a labyrinth of rock formations. Find out everything from permits to this experience we’ll never forget!
Planning for Fiery Furnace in Arches National Park
The Fiery Furnace is not your typical hiking trail. It is a natural maze of narrow passages through towering sandstone walls. And getting lost is easy to do. In fact, it’s part of the experience. So, plan for at least 3 hours. And be prepared with plenty of water, snacks and good hiking shoes. You can read more about it at: Fiery Furnace Hikes – Arches National Park (U.S. National Park Service).
Are you ready to go? Not so fast, you need a permit first. And they are limited each day. Though there are 2 ways to explore Fiery Furnace, with a ranger, or without. We would have opted for the ranger-led experience, but in April they had not started them yet. So, we decided to shoot for the self-guided exploration. You can check out both options at: Fiery Furnace Permits – Arches National Park.
To get a permit, you have to reserve one online at Arches National Park Tours – Recreation.gov. However, reservations are only available 7 days in advance. Since I want to spend a full day exploring Arches, planning Fiery Furnace on a different day makes sense. And the one day we have a free afternoon is Easter Sunday. After church and brunch, we have no plans for the afternoon. So, the Sunday before at 8:00AM MT, I try to get reservations. And in a second, they are gone. But I practiced the day before, and knew you have up to 15 minutes to book them before releasing them. So, I kept trying for 15 minutes. I would see some become available, and then they were gone again. But just after 15 minutes, more became available, and I got us 3!
Getting the Fiery Furnace Permit
After being persistent, I reserved our permits online. However, the actual permit must be picked up in person at the visitor center. Though they are only available the day before or day of your hike. Since we arrived in Moab late the day before, we planned to pick up ours before hiking. The final pickup time was 3:30 PM, with sunset at 7:45 PM. However, we chose the earliest afternoon pickup slot at 2:00 PM to give us plenty of time.
Inside the visitor center, Becky sees the passport stamp area before we head to the information desk. But we are about 10 minutes early, and they tell us to come back a few minutes before 2:00PM. So we browse around the exhibits. There’s a lot of information about the rocks and animals found in the park. And just before 2:00PM, we return to the desk to check-in, and are lead into a room for the presentation.
There’s a few rows of seats with a TV in front of the room. And there’s only 2 other couples here, with no kids. After getting seated, they press play to the same video found on their website. But afterwards, a park ranger talks to us for a few minutes before opening up for questions and answers. The big thing they stress is don’t leave anything in the Fiery Furnace. That includes human poop. But the good news is they sell bags in the gift shop just for the occasion. And after about 20 minutes the presentation is over, and we are given our actual permit. But before we leave, we head to the gift shop to get a few things, including 1 bag, just in case.
Driving to Fiery Furnace
It’s a 14 mile drive to the Fiery Furnace from the visitor center. So, we plug in our GuideAlong app to listen along the way and learn more about the park. From the visitor center, the road ascends until it opens up to a vast desert landscape. We pass the Park Avenue section, but GuideAlong points out a viewpoint that sounds better ahead.
The La Sal Mountains Viewpoint is an excellent stop to check out 360-degree views. We see the snow-covered La Sal Mountains to the east, which seem out of place in this desert climate. And looking back we can see some interesting rock formations including the Three Gossips.
This vantage point gives us a great perspective of what we can see in the park. And the scenic drive continues past these rock formations. Back in the car, we pull into the Courthouse Towers Viewpoint to get a closer look at the rock formations. But we stay in the car, and it takes us about 45 minutes to get to our destination.
Fiery Furnace Viewpoint
When we arrive in the parking lot, there are plenty of spaces. So, we park near the viewpoint trail. This short trail gives us our 1st glimpse of the Fiery Furnace, but from the outside.
Outside the Fiery Furnace, it just looks like more rock formations. But we will soon know what it’s like inside. From the viewpoint we can also see the La Sal Mountains in the distance. We wouldn’t necessarily recommend a stop at this viewpoint. But we wanted to see what we were getting into, before we started the trail. After a few minutes, we walk back to the car and move it to the other side near the main trailhead. There are restrooms in between that we stop at first. And before we hit the trail, I attach the permit to my backpack.
Start of the Fiery Furnace Trail
We start the trail just after 3:30PM with over 4 hours until sunset. I also have my AllTrails app with this trail downloaded to my phone just in case. We see another group go before us, and the trail starts easy enough until it gets very narrow. And then we have to decide, do we climb through this narrow passage, or find a way around it? We climb through it. This is just the beginning…
On the other side, our daughter sees a small arrow. We went the right way! As we continue to climb down, we see a small pole with another arrow and a flat trail. And about 20 minutes into the hike, our daughter needs a snack. After a quick stop, we continue along, spotting more arrows.
At first these small inch-wide arrows aren’t hard to find. But we’re still walking outside the large rock formations. And then the trail leads us to what looks like a dead end with rocks blocking the path. But we spot an arrow above us, so we continue by climbing over the rocks.
At this point, it’s been easy navigating the trail. But we start to climb into the Fiery Furnace. After another narrow passage, we continue down where we’re seeing a lot of green shrubs and trees. And it is a little cooler outside of the direct sunlight.
We head down one path only to find a dead end, and have to turn around. Continuing through more narrow passages, we find some secret areas. And then we make it to our 1st official dead end.
The Dead Ends in the Fiery Furnace
Having researched this trail, we knew going off the beaten path was part of the fun. And some spurs lead to arches, including the first one called Skull Arch. So, when we see a dead end sign, we decide to see where it leads, and it doesn’t disappoint.
We continue straight to a large rock wall where we see 2 ways to go. The left path leads us through a small arch that we have to climb through. We’re immediately glad we took this path and continue through it until it dead ends.
At the end are some large rocks, and it’s clear that we cannot go any further. Though the large rocks have some holes in them resembling eyes in a skull. However, there’s no arch. So, we head back through the small arch, and go the other way.
During our ranger presentation, we learned about the scarcity of water here and how life depends on it. So when we first see a small puddle between some large rocks, we are fascinated. And then we continue to find another dead end with a large puddle surrounded by green bushes. So, we turn around and go back to the dead end sign. But there’s still one other path to the left we can follow from here.
This path leads to some larger rocks we have to climb. And at the top between towering rock walls feels like a secluded cave. Another dead end, and still no arch, so we climb back down. We also see an interesting cactus we identify as a kingcup cactus, before continuing on the trail.
Continuing through the Fiery Furnace
At this point, we’ve been on this hike for a little more than hour. And I’m thinking this is the greatest experience we’ve had together in a national park. But back on the trail, it starts becoming more difficult. The trail takes us climbing over rocks, through more narrow passageways, and into some incredible landscapes. And the arrows are becoming harder to find.
We’re finding our way, until we see another dead end ahead sign. Could this be the way to Skull Arch? We have to try. And it leads to more incredible areas we’ve discovered. At least it feels that way, because we haven’t seen anyone else since the start of the trail. And I break out the AllTrails app to see where we are. We have to be close.
We see more standing water, and as we continue past it, we see even more puddles and lush scenery. We climb around a large puddle and into another slot canyon. And at the end is another large puddle, but still no arch. As we’re walking back, I see something fly overhead. So I look up to see a large raven. And it’s so quiet, we can hear the flapping of its large wings echoing against the canyon walls.
Skull Arch
Looking up, Becky and I see, and hear, the raven pass through the canyon. And when we look back, we find Skull Arch! We had walked right past it and didn’t notice it because we were looking ahead.
Skull arch is up high, and looks really hard to climb to get closer to it. But we are just fine admiring it from where we are. We take a few minutes to enjoy what we’ve been looking for.
I check my AllTrails app and realize we are not halfway through the Fiery Furnace yet. It’s now 5:30PM, over 2 hours since we started. We need to go faster. Once out of the canyon, we look back and can’t believe Skull Arch is hidden in there. We also see another kingcup cactus and some other shrubs until we make it back to the dead end sign.
The Heart of the Fiery Furnace
We find the arrow, and the trail becomes even more challenging. We leave the ground as the trail climbs through the sandstone maze. When we’re thinking we may gotten lost, we get super excited when we spot a tiny arrow on a huge rock wall.
At this point the arrows just point in a direction because there’s no trail left to follow. We have to jump from one rock to another, and navigate around some drop-offs. I’m using AllTrails through this area as we pass something on the map labeled the Pit of Possible Returns. At one point we have to stem between two fins. Stemming is using your hands and feet to navigate between the free-standing walls of sandstone.
We make it to another flat area and spot an arrow on a pole. I follow the arrow to the left to a path leading to a big drop-off. So, I turn around. This can’t be the way. Going the other one I find a dead end, so I open the AllTrails app again and figure out the way we are supposed to go. And it leads us back to where we started. And we see another arch.
The smaller kissing Turtle Arch resembles two turtle heads touching. It’s also up high and easy to miss. And the app continues to guide me back to the path with the drop-off. And then I spot another tiny arrow pointing straight ahead.
The large drop-off must be the Pit of Possible Returns, but we’re not heading into it. We hug the fin walls as we navigate around this sketchy spot until we find the next arrow.
Getting Lost and Finding our Way Back
There’s another spur to Surprise Arch close by. But using AllTrails, I can see we’re separated by a rock wall. So, we skip it. A few minutes later, my phone dies at 6:51PM. I forgot my battery pack in the car, and now we’re worried about getting back before dark.
Just minutes later, we find another pole with lots of arrows. But the path is still not clear. Though we run into a guy, the only person we’ve seen this whole time. He’s going the opposite way and tells us the end is straight back from here. So, we feel relieved we are close to the end.
The path continues through an opening between 2 large rocks. And we eventually find another tiny arrow on a rock, the last we would find. The arrow points to our right where we can see well-traveled paths. We follow them only to get lost.
Somehow, we ventured off the path and stopped seeing footprints. So we head back only to find another dead end. We can see the overlook from the trail, but there is a wall of rocks between us. We can’t find the way and the girls are starting to panic.
We know we are close. So, I decide to just find a way around the rocks. So, we walk off-trail, and around the rock wall until we make it to another trail. It’s the trail we started on.
We head backwards to the start of the trail. It took us 40 minutes from the last arrow to the end. And we make it back just after sunset to find our car is the only one left in the parking lot.
Summary
We know the Fiery Furnace took us 4 hours and 17 minutes to complete. And when my phone died an hour before we finished, we had completed 4.2 miles up to that point. So, somehow this 2 mile trail turned into over 5 miles. Though we were having fun, at least until the last 40 minutes trying to find our way out. And our daughter did great. This was her longest hike by far and the longest we’ve done as a family. One thing’s for sure, it’s an experience we will never forget.
After we finished, Becky was able to get a map of the path we took from her Apple watch. And I can see where we got lost, but that really is part of the fun. It’s debatable if we would ever do this again, at least together. Though I loved it. Our only recommendation, other than bringing plenty of water and snacks, is enjoy it. And bring a battery pack in case your phone dies!
Check out more of our experiences at the Utah Mighty 5.